


words mean more at night

by dewshi



Series: mountain dew commercials, disguised as love poems [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Normal High School, Fluff, Humanstuck, Kissing, Love Confessions, M/M, Underage Drinking, quiet moments, that's kind of all they do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:41:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27876246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dewshi/pseuds/dewshi
Summary: Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you haven’t ever been happy. You’ve beenhappy, you’ve feltjoy, obviously. You’ve played around with your friends, gotten compliments, heard funny jokes. But you can’t say you remember a moment in your life when you’ve been actually happy.
Relationships: Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas, Mentioned Rosemary - Relationship
Series: mountain dew commercials, disguised as love poems [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1854733
Comments: 5
Kudos: 70





	words mean more at night

**Author's Note:**

> proofreading is a lie invented by the government

Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you haven’t ever been happy. You’ve been _happy_ , you’ve felt _joy_ , obviously. You’ve played around with your friends, gotten compliments, heard funny jokes. But you can’t say you remember a moment in your life when you’ve been actually happy.

The closest you’ve gotten to that would probably be just after you turned 12. That was when your friend group first really came together. You remember when you all met up that summer at CondesceCon, walking around the convention centre as a herd of rabid tweens of all shapes and sizes. You definitely went a few decibels above the recommended volume at even the quietest moments. 

You can remember sitting between Sollux and Terezi at the ice cream parlour. You remember when you all went to that one arcade afterwards, and one of your friends was always able to kick your ass no matter what game you asked to play with them. You’d been so angry about it at the time, but all of that anger melted away as soon as the others whisked you into the photobooth to make dumb faces with them.

There had always been that dissatisfaction underlining it all, but for those moments, you were able to put it away. Not far enough away that it wasn’t eating at you the whole time, but far enough away that you could allow yourself to smile and laugh more than you probably had in years, before or since.

But, y’know, then the whole thing happened with Vriska and Terezi and… everyone. After that disaster, half of the members of the group having cut ties with the other half, some scattered to the winds, it was a matter of time. And it wasn't like you could stop it. With the state you were in, you're surprised you made it through those years alive. By the time you finished middle school, your friend group was just you, Kanaya, and Terezi. 

You’re not sure how you ended up with the three of them out of everyone you were friends with. Sure, Terezi was cool, but you were never really that close with Kanaya before that. You both liked Twilight - books in general, really - but that was about the farthest from a common interest that either of you might have with Terezi. You had something in common with Terezi and something in common with Kanaya, and they had something in common between them, but there was nothing that tied your whole group together.

But that was the group with whom you headed into high school. You went to high school in a different part of town than where you’d grown up, and Kanaya and Terezi were accepted into the same school, thankfully. So it was the three of you together in a new place full of people you did not know.

You ended up slowly getting incorporated into another local friend group. Well, maybe incorporated isn’t the right word. You ended up osmosizing with a local friend group. Dave and Rose had apparently been best friends with John and Jade since primary school. It was Jade and John who you made friends with, at first. You, at least. Terezi and Kanaya were fast friends with Dave and Rose. You mostly hung out with John and Jade, when you hung out with them at all.

Then John and Jade abruptly had to move town. It was a hard blow for you, but clearly a harder blow for Rose and Dave. Kanaya and Terezi sure seemed sympathetic. To be honest, you couldn’t stand Rose or, god forbid, Dave. They both had this affect to them, condescending and know-it-all-ish, as if they were the end-all, be-all of everything. Rose was frustrating enough on her own, but Dave was douchebag incarnate. He wore these infuriating shades and a deadpan face. His voice was so monotone that you can forgive Kanaya and Terezi from missing all of the secret insecurity that was emblazoned on him like a neon sign at a strip club.

You would sit in the cafeteria, scowling at him all throughout lunch, forced to be at his table only because you had nowhere else to go. Almost every day, you got into some sort of argument with him about something that didn’t even matter. He seemed to delight in making you mad, as much as he could delight in anything with that fucking face of his.

The worst of it was when you had to go over to someone’s house with them. Oh, fuck, what a hellish punishment it was to have to sit on Kanaya’s bed, listening to Rose and Dave ramble on for hours. But, then, you rambled just as well, and so did Kanaya. Terezi was the only one who refrained from ranting, to be honest.

The longer things went on, the more isolated you and Dave became. Terezi would spend less time with you and more with other friends. Kanaya and Rose became functionally codependent, especially after they started dating. So a lot of the time, you and Dave were left by yourselves when the girls were busy. 

You sat at the library when the others didn't show up for study sessions. He helped you with your math homework. Surprisingly. That was the first time you really paid attention to him. When he was explaining, he spoke in a different tone. More subdued. Less… structured. Like he was speaking freely.

He gestured more than usual, and drew little doodles of whatever he was trying to show you. Behind that vacant facade he always wore, for the first time that you could recall, you saw genuine excitement. The moment broke when he told you you were staring at him like an owl hatchling, and you had to stop to shout at him about it. They kicked you out of the library.

You chose not to bring up what you saw in him that day. You got the feeling if you did, he'd clam up like he'd never clammed up before. Call you a liar, maybe, or talk some more about irony and coolness.

But it happened again, more than once and with increasing frequency. Like, when you got to see Dave's room for the first time. You were over at the Strider-Lalonde house, and Rose had asked to get to be in her room alone. So Dave invited you up to his place.

It was a hellscape. Every wall was covered floor to ceiling in highlighter-coloured stickers and ugly old movie memorabilia. There were cinderblocks scattered like bear traps and every shelf was lined with jars of preserved creatures and dried-out carapaces. You knew Dave was into paleontology, but this was not what you expected.

When you asked about it, Dave went on for probably half an hour. He pointed out specific individual critters and told you what they were and where he’d gotten them. He told you about what sort of processes preserved a body like that, how arthropods, molluscs and chordates were affected differently. What that weird stuff it that the ones in jars are preserved in. All the while, he had this expression on his face. A subdued smile.

You were sitting on his bed, playing Mario Kart on his Switch. You could barely see the tiny screen, but his mom was watching the TV downstairs, so it was the best you had. He wouldn’t shut up for a second, teasing you about how you were playing, laughing when you accused him of cheating, greeting you every time you ended up neck-in-neck with him. 

He said something when you finally got first place, you don’t remember what anymore. You just remember that with everything, the victory music on screen and the tone of his voice, it made you laugh. Really, earnestly laugh. It felt good. You don’t laugh a lot anymore. Especially around other people. And you opened your eyes and he was looking at you, almost in awe, smiling wider than you’d ever seen before.

You were friends with Dave. Real friends. Friends like you were friends with your 11 friends when you were a kid. No. Better than that. He was by your side throughout the year. He helped you trough the stress of school, through supporting Terezi after a really bad break-up. He made you feel… 

You didn’t know what to call it.

You were afraid that it would end after high school. Terrified. Mortified, actually. You’re not a moron. You’ve heard everyone talk about how nothing lasts after high school. It’s all a phase, being teens. That really scared you. You talked about it with Kanaya first, then Terezi. Both of them assured you that you’d stay friends, no matter what. You talked to them mostly through Trollian, even then. You tried not to mention that it was Dave who you were the most scared of losing. They both told you to talk to him about it. You guess you weren’t as slick as you thought.

You put it off. Of course you did. You didn’t know what to say to him. “Dave, I’m scared that we can’t hang out anymore after we graduate high school!” Yeah, right. Like he wouldn’t break into a laughing fit if you said that.

...Well, he didn’t.

It was at night. You were at Terezi’s place for a sleepover. Terezi and Kanaya were fast asleep. Rose had gone to the bathroom. It was just you and Dave, lying down on adjacent mattresses. He was toying with his sunglasses, like he wasn’t even trying to sleep. You watched him, and you said, “Dave.”

He turned his head towards you. You could tell he couldn’t quite see you in the dark. That was okay. The words felt hard enough to get out as it was.

“Are we still going to be bros?” you whispered coarsely. “After we graduate.”

You saw the expression on his face soften. You couldn’t quite tell what into, though; amusement or melancholy or something like that. Then he said, “yeah, of course. No offense, Karkat, that’s a dumb fucking question. Why wouldn’t we be?”

“I don’t know,” you said. “I just don’t… I don’t want to drift apart like I always do from everyone.”

Dave didn’t say anything. He just placed his hand on your mattress. In your sleep-addled brain, only one thing made sense to you. So you took his hand into yours. If he was surprised, you couldn’t tell. He just squeezed your hand and whispered, “don’t worry your pretty li’l head about it. We’re bros for life.”

You snorted in laughter, but that didn’t lessen the feeling of finality in his words. You believed him. “Alright. Yeah.”

You don’t know what happened after that. All you know is that somehow, you ended up with your face an inch away from Dave’s. And then you ended up with your lips 0 inches away from Dave’s. Right, yeah. Bros for life.

If you were “a little bit hesitant” to bring up your anxieties, you were completely unable to bring the kiss up. You and Dave would share glances occasionally that felt like they said things you’d never have the words for. But other than that, you acted like it never happened. You still hung out, you still spent every day together. You kind of… ended up believing the kiss was a one-time thing, and it wouldn’t ever happen again. Why would it?

It did.

It was at a Halloween party. Dave was drunk, and so were you, a little. You both always said you didn’t drink, but that night, you had, for some reason. At 1 in the morning, you walked him home to get him there safe, and at the door, he leaned down and kissed you. Deeper than the sleepover. You kissed back.

You didn’t talk about it, still. You acted like nothing had happened. But after the second kiss, you could tell the girls knew something was up. Terezi asked you one time how Dave was doing even though you had seen her talking to him in algebra class the previous day. Then she gave you an infuriatingly knowing look. You flipped her off and left her cracking up as you marched to class.

You kissed Dave again when he came over to your house a few weeks after Halloween. He decided to sleep over that night. You kissed him more than once.

At that point, it was hard to deny that there was something more than ‘bros for life’ happening. But you weren’t sure that Dave agreed. The shy glances started being followed by quickly averting his eyes, like actually meeting your gaze was somehow too much. He didn’t smile quite as often. He still looked at you that way whenever he made you laugh, though. And that was enough.

At the end of November, you messaged him at 2 AM. It felt safer than talking in person. And you were so sleep-deprived that it didn’t feel like anything was real anyway. You were pretty sure he wasn’t awake. So you messaged him, asking what you were. To your surprise, he responded. He said he didn’t know. That he just wanted to keep being close to you. You said you wanted to be close to him too.

He asked if it would be okay if he came over, and you said yes. And he did, and you kissed, and you wanted to ask if you could be his boyfriend, but you were too scared. He texted you a heart the next evening, and you sent him one back. You decided that you didn’t need to be boyfriends, if you could keep having this anyway.

So that’s how you ended up here. It’s getting close to midnight. Your head is resting against his calf. He’s sitting cross-legged on your bed with a guitar, strumming some melody and humming along to it. His voice is beautiful. You have a book in your hands, but you stopped reading a while ago so you could just listen. He stops playing and laughs. “Are you asleep?”

“Did I say you could stop playing?” you counter. He laughs again, soft and breathy. You tilt your head and see him, looking down at you. He has that awed smile on his face, even though you haven’t been laughing. You smile back at him. “Dave.”

“Yeah?” he asks. And you don’t feel scared.

“I love you.”

He looks surprised at first, but then it melts away and he smiles even wider. Not just in adoration, but in genuine joy. He says, “I love you too.”

You weren’t expecting to tear up. But you do anyway, and lean deeper against him. He starts playing again, and singing a melody that you know is a gift to you. 

Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you’re happy.


End file.
